San Antonio's Labor Day weekend is about to get a lot funkier, with a homemade replica of Parliament-Funkadelic's legendary Mothership stage prop set to hover over a lineup of R&B and funk royalty at Boeing Center at Tech Port on Sunday. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show kicks off at 7 p.m., bringing Zapp, The Bar-Kays, Lakeside, Klymaxx featuring Joyce Irby, Spanish Fly, Jesse Pringle and Bede The Neo Soul to the same arena stage for San Antonio Funk Fest 2026.
The centerpiece prop is a 30-by-40-foot spaceship built by Converse business owner Hector Garcia, who fabricated the replica at his Pro Trailer shop, as reported by San Antonio Express-News writer Vincent T. Davis. Garcia began building the piece, which he calls the Funk Ship and outfits with smoke effects and strobe lights, after getting encouragement from George Clinton's management following funk videos Garcia posted online under the handle DJ ME IN THE MIX. According to the same report, Garcia moved to San Antonio at 19 and picked up welding and vehicle-repair skills along the way, and the Funk Ship has already been a draw at area funk festivals for several years.
From a Converse Lot to a High-Tech Arena
Garcia's ship previously flew closer to the ground. He and partner George D'Funkavinci Hudson staged the two-day San Antonio Mothership Festival at Garcia's Pro Trailer property in Converse last August, letting fans tour the spacecraft replica in person. Hudson, a San Antonio resident originally from Compton, California, became a lifelong funk fan after watching the original Mothership prop descend at a Parliament/Funkadelic concert in Los Angeles, per the same Express-News account. Garcia told the paper he intends to keep building on that momentum, saying simply that he is not stopping and that the funk helps bring people together.
This year the ship touches down inside Boeing Center at Tech Port, a venue built on the former Kelly Air Force Base grounds. The $70 million, 130,000-square-foot facility opened in May 2022 with a concert arena capacity of roughly 3,100 guests, part of Port San Antonio's redevelopment of the base into a high-tech industrial and entertainment hub — a transformation Hoodline detailed in its report on the $300M office tower nearby. The arena itself features a 60-by-20-foot LED wall and musical Tesla coils built into one wall, gear that can be woven into live lighting and 7.1 surround sound.
Real Mothership History Behind the Replica
The original P-Funk Mothership made its concert debut in October 1976 during the Mothership Connection tour, landing onstage in smoke and light as George Clinton emerged as his alter ego Dr. Funkenstein, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic used that prop throughout their 1970s Mothership Connection concerts. The original touring prop was disassembled for parts in 1983, but a 1,200-pound aluminum replica built in the mid-1990s was acquired by the Smithsonian in 2011 and now anchors the museum's permanent Musical Crossroads exhibition, per the Smithsonian Institution.
Genre-wise, the music that filled that original stage — P-Funk — is defined by psychedelic guitar riffs and horns popularized by Parliament/Funkadelic, distinct from the more R&B- and soul-grounded strain of regular funk that acts like The Bar-Kays helped define, per the Express-News report.
Bar-Kays Bring Survivor Story to the Stage
The Bar-Kays debuted in 1967 with the single Soul Finger on Stax Records, a sound the Express-News notes evolved out of gospel, blues and R&B into funk. That debut single peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 17 on the Hot 100, according to Stax Records, and featured a group of local Memphis children invited into the studio to shout the title line in exchange for Cokes; the instrumental track opened with a horn arrangement of Mary Had a Little Lamb.
Co-founder and bass player James Alexander carries a heavier history into Sunday's show. The December 1967 plane crash that killed several Bar-Kays members and Otis Redding, near Madison, Wisconsin, spared Alexander only because there were no remaining seats on Redding's private plane, forcing him onto a commercial flight instead, according to Popdose. Alexander and surviving trumpeter Ben Cauley rebuilt the group with new members after the tragedy. Fred Alexander, another member of the Bar-Kays family, died recently, the Express-News reported. Speaking to the paper, James Alexander said he looks forward to performing at the San Antonio event and invited fans to leave their troubles behind and party.
Zapp, Klymaxx and Lakeside Round Out the Bill
Zapp brings its own outsized legacy to the lineup. The group's signature hits More Bounce to the Ounce, from 1980, and Computer Love, from 1985, both masterminded by talk-box pioneer Roger Troutman, have been sampled more than 300 times and 120 times, respectively, according to Rhino Records, with artists including 2Pac, Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa drawing from the catalog to help anchor West Coast G-funk.
Klymaxx, featuring Joyce Irby, scored its biggest crossover hit with the 1985 ballad I Miss You, which spent 29 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaked at No. 5, and ended as Billboard's No. 3 single of the year for 1986, per Ladyslipper Music. The all-female group stood out in the era as a self-contained band that wrote and played its own instruments. Dayton, Ohio, act Lakeside — fronted by founding member and vocalist Mark Adam Wood Jr. — rounds out the marquee names with catalog staples It's All the Way Live, Something About That Woman and the 1980 No. 1 hit Fantastic Voyage, all recorded on Solar Records.
A Local Push to Keep Funk Alive
April Winn, a founding member of the Black Kat Funk Band, is helping organize this year's Funk Fest and told the Express-News that preserving funk music matters for younger generations. The event lands the same year another major regional funk gathering, the NOLA Funk Fest, drew acts like Galactic and Dumpstaphunk to New Orleans in a similar bid to keep the genre's living heritage on stage, as Hoodline reported in its coverage of that riverfront funk takeover.
Tickets for San Antonio Funk Fest 2026 are available through boeingcentertechport.com, with doors opening at 6 p.m. and the show beginning at 7 p.m. Sunday of Labor Day weekend at Boeing Center at Tech Port, 3331 General Hudnell Drive.
